MAP29: River Styx (TNT: Evilution)

MAP29: River Styx is the twenty-ninth map of TNT: Evilution. It was designed by Jimmy Sieben and uses the music track "Death's Bells" by L.A. Sieben shared with MAP04: Wormhole and MAP13: Nukage Processing.

Essentials
Start

You begin in a vaguely circular outdoor area. Kill the enemies, and descend a flight of stairs into a long, winding red tunnel ahead. This tunnel is sparsely populated by imps, demons, lost souls and some shotgun guys, which should not put up too much resistance. Follow the tunnel to its end, being careful of a demon ambush from behind about one-third of the way through.

You will then emerge into a blood-filled courtyard with a green marble "temple" ahead of you. Step into the temple via the stairs at its sides and enter the narrow path ahead. Turn right and take the second left path. You should go down a short flight of stairs. Turn right to emerge into a lava-floored circular room with small brick ledges.

Optional area

Face forward (west) and enter a thin, narrow lava path. Follow the path to the end, being wary of enemies on raised platforms next to the path. Near the end of the path, you will step up from lava onto a brown-floored corridor. Continue forward, and the left wall will open, releasing some monsters and revealing a switch. As you step into the area with the switch, another trap will open behind you. Handle all the monsters as best as you can.

Flip the switch and begin backtracking to the circular room. Note that all the raised platforms next to the path have lowered, allowing you access to a significant amount of rockets, shells and medikits on one of them. Further up, a door has opened, allowing access to a soulsphere (and a plasma rifle on Hey, not too rough and lower). Do be careful; the soulsphere is guarded by up to nine chaingunners.

Blue skull key and switch

Face north, walk around the raised brick ledge in front and enter a marble hallway, which turns left into a lava-floored hallway with a thin brick ledge in the middle. Kill the shotgun guys on the walkways and revenants in the wall alcoves (on Hurt me plenty and higher), and follow the walkway to its end.

You will now enter into a maze of similar-looking, marble-walled rooms. Turn left and go straight through the next room into a marble floored square room. There will be two pathways on either side; go through the right pathway, turn left, then right again. You should now face a flight of stairs. Ascend these stairs, and a large number of crushers in the room in front of you will activate. From the crusher room's entrance, you should just be able to see the exit on the left (southern) wall of the room. As the three or four crushers blocking your way to the exit rise together, quickly run through to the next room. Take care of the cacodemon ahead (on Hurt me plenty and higher) and take the teleporter in the room behind it.

You should be teleported to a room near the north side of the maze. The blue skull key should be on a staircase in front of you. Take it, being wary of any monsters visible through the window ahead.

Go back through the teleporter you entered from, go straight to the end of the hallway and turn right. You should be facing the crusher room again, and the exit from it should be on your right. Once again, wait for the crushers blocking your way to rise together, and run through to the next room. Face north and proceed to the room right at the end, where the blue skull switch should be on the east wall. Flip the switch.

Red skull key

Backtrack to the room just east of the crusher room, and go east until you can go no further. You should notice that a new alcove has opened up in the south wall of this room, with a skull switch at the end, flip the switch. This opens a window on the room's east wall and a U-shaped passageway on the room's south wall to an otherwise inaccessible room with the red skull key.

On Hurt me plenty and below, it is a simple matter of going through the passageway and retrieving the unprotected red skull key. However, on Ultra-Violence and higher, the red skull key room contains a spiderdemon, and upon backing out of the skull key alcove, you will be exposed to it via the newly opened window. A suggested strategy is to bring any remaining enemies in the maze to it, bait them into monster infighting, and use the U-shaped passageway to attack the distracted spiderdemon with a rocket launcher, especially with the large amount of rockets supplied in the hallway. Once the spiderdemon is eliminated, pick up the red skull key.

Yellow skull key and exit

Backtrack to the circular room. Step onto the cross-shaped ledge via steps on each end, and proceed south. Follow the brick walkway to its end. You should end up at an area with four pillars and a red door. Open the red door to enter a large courtyard with a tower in the middle. Dispose of the enemies (prioritize the ones on the tower first, especially the arch-vile and baron of Hell on Ultra-Violence and above). If necessary, use either one of two teleporters in the northeast and southwest corners; they are linked to each other, and will allow you to switch positions and get the jump on enemies.

Once the enemies have been thinned out, enter the red door on the courtyard's south wall. Use the teleporter behind it to access the tower and retrieve the yellow skull key. Drop down from the tower and open the yellow door on the courtyard's east wall.

You will be teleported to the final stretch of the level. Kill the Pain Elemental in front of you (on Ultra-violence and above). The next room on the right has a raised demon-head platform on the floor, which is linked to a teleport ambush, set off by sound. The monsters that will teleport in, by each difficulty level, are as follows:


 * Hey, not too rough and below: 2 imps
 * Hurt me Plenty: 2 demons, 1 imp, and 2 Hell knights
 * Ultra-Violence and above: 2 demons, 1 imp, four lost souls, 2 Hell knights and 1 arch-vile

Go through the exit door and dispose of the shotgun guy(s). Flip the switch on the wall ahead, which will lower the exit teleporter on the east wall of the room. Step into it to end the level.

Official

 * 1) Once you reach the "porch" of the green marble temple, find the only green torch. Press the use key on it to lower a lift on the opposite side of the porch. Ride it to the top, where a soul sphere is located. (sector 91)
 * 2) After entering the temple, hug the left wall until you reach a security armor overlooking a bridge crossing some lava. The ground it rests on counts as a secret. (sector 474)
 * 3) From secret 2, backtrack a bit and you will come across a stairway that dips down in the middle, with an opening to an outdoor area at the lowest point. Open the green marble wall across from the opening to find an ammo cache. (sector 20)

Non-official

 * 1) Halfway through the long red tunnel in the beginning of the level, there will be a niche with a green torch to your right. Open the back wall to reveal a pair of medikits.
 * 2) There is a S-shaped tunnel to the north-west from circular lava-filled room. After the second turn, you can see a "vent" near the floor on the wall to your left. (Similar "vents" are commonly used in maps for setting off monsters by means of propagating player's gunshot sounds.) This "vent" is actually a fake wall, behind which lies the passage to a hidden room. Enter this passage and climb the stairs. As soon as you walk on the highest step, you will not be able to return the same way, being caught in an ambush. So stay on the second step from above and make an attack sound to attract the monsters. As they hear you, run down the stairs, wait at the passage entrance and enjoy the monster infighting. Dodge the projectiles that may be thrown at you. After some time, most monsters will have killed each other, so you will not lose much ammo and health. After killing everyone in there, flip the switch and step into the teleporter to be taken to the tunnel where you came from.
 * 3) In the courtyard with tower in center, columns along the perimeter are placed in a pattern, alternating between stone and metallic. Metallic ones can be lowered to reveal some goodies. Look for the column that breaks the pattern (in the southwest corner), which contains a megasphere.

Bugs

 * 1) On Hurt Me Plenty, a mancubus cannot teleport into the final area of the level, making it impossible to reach 100% kills (except if an arch-vile respawns an enemy or, when using No Clipping mode, you run into its hidden room and kill it.).

Current Compet-n records
The Compet-n records for the map are:

The data was last verified in its entirety on July 5, 2020.

Current DSDA records
The records for the map at the Doom Speed Demo Archive are:

The data was last verified in its entirety on May 27, 2023.

Player spawns
This level contains five spawn points:
 * 1) facing south. (thing 388)
 * 2) facing north-east. (thing 389)
 * 3) facing south-west. (thing 390)
 * 4) facing north-west. (thing 391)
 * 5) facing south-east. (thing 392)

Things
This level contains the following numbers of things per skill level: